Upending the Ivory Tower. Stefan M. Bradley

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СКАЧАТЬ behavior on the blacks.” As a result, Goheen explained, “The opportunities and scope for misunderstanding and mutual distrust in such a situation are very great.”

      The president was correct; black students suffered from the misunderstanding. So much so that one student said this about Princeton, misunderstanding, and mistakes: “Education is the opportunity to make mistakes. The bigger the error made, the better the education received. So essentially,” he wrote, “Princeton has been one the biggest mistakes of my life.”120 The characterization of his choice to attend the Ivy school was likely not typical of most black students, but it did represent the thoughts of some. The ultimate question for them at the beginning and end of their time at Princeton was: What were they willing to bear to be a Princetonian?

      The relative peace at Princeton regarding black activism carried into the 1970s. Henry also theorized that higher numbers of black students and socioeconomic class played a role in the peace that resumed on campus in the 1970s. In Henry’s graduating class (1969), there were fourteen black men. The number of black students rose exponentially in the years following 1965. During the late 1960s and early 1970s Princeton pursued black students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. Henry speculated that with more black students enrolled there was a looser bond than when there were fewer students, who could remain tighter as a group. The students who came before 1965 were also mostly black middle and working class, which allowed them to initially relate to each other better than when a more economically diverse body of black students arrived on campus, he thought. Henry did not mean that students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds did not get along with those from higher socioeconomic backgrounds, but rather that their economic class status played a part in how they approached life at Princeton. Framing his thoughts as conjecture, he supposed that students from working class and poorer families were perhaps less likely to engage in protest to protect their student status. They might have thought, “I can’t afford not to be here” because they knew that finishing at Princeton would present opportunities to improve life for their families.

      Ralph Austin, from the class of 1973, represented one of the students from a lower-income household. He grew up in Trenton, where he had observed ghetto life. He described the environment at home and at Princeton as like “night and day” and recalled it was almost as if he had gone from “the ghetto to utopia as far as the surroundings.”121 This was not, though, his first experience with Princeton as a town or university. He had family members who made deliveries to the eating clubs and Austin had also participated in the summer program that brought inner-city black youth to campus to take courses. This was the same program in which historian Komozi Woodard participated as a boy. Knowing something about the campus helped ease his mind when he finally enrolled. Still, he had to confront the history of the school, when he lived in a dormitory that at one point in history, Austin claimed, housed enslaved people. In spite of being relatively acquainted with the campus, much of the scene was new to him.

      The stark whiteness of the institution was obvious and Austin also took notice of the nuances in the socioeconomic class status of black students. He said that some of the black students “had some money,” which made them different from the black people he knew in Trenton, who were “poor.” Austin admitted to being a little intimidated by the prep school students, some of whom were black. He used their background in contrast to his as motivation and inspiration. “My whole attitude was hey, I came from an inner city high school and I can compete with you guys and you come from prep school, so I think I’m doing better than you are.” Other students from his background, he claimed, shared that attitude. To make money, he worked as a waiter in an eating club. The presence of the ABC, which included black students from all backgrounds, reassured him that there was a network of support. In his mind, the network of ABC and “being in the midst of the black revolution” were enough to assuage some of his anxiety of being different racially and socioeconomically.

      Henry had a final thought about the number of demonstrations in the 1970s. Injecting a bit of humor, he suggested that a lot of the demonstrating and protesting that the young men did at Princeton in the 1960s was just “pent up whatever,” and that when Princeton finally invited women to enroll, the university relieved some of that tension.122 The entrance of women certainly changed the dynamics of campus life, but whether they helped with the “pent up whatever” is debatable. Women Princetonians faced unique circumstances and resisted in their own ways and with others. Black women in the Ivy League and the “Seven Sister” schools were often participatory and in the leading roles of student actions. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, however, survival was a priority for most women in the Ivy League.

      At Princeton, women did not enroll until 1969 and the transition was not always smooth for them. Mistreatment, rejection, and discomfort were not reserved for black male students. Women had been able to attend Princeton in the past, but they could not officially graduate. The idea to become coeducational was not always popular among the male Princetonians. One alumnus from the class of 1920, E. S. Hubbell, who represented the Denver Committee for the Preservation of Princeton, was upset when he learned of the decision. He remarked that “Princeton Tradition” was important and “precious.”123 Princeton, he emphatically stated, “has been a male domain; it must remain so.” At stake was the manhood of the “traditional” students, Hubbell claimed. College should be a place where a boy is allowed to develop his manhood because after his time at the university, “he is forever lost in a feminine world,” according to the alumnus. Hubbell clarified, though, that he was not a “woman hater” because he was married with two daughters.

      Hubbell was not alone in his opinions. George Hammond Jr. in the class of 1940, concurred, stating: “Male isolation is the big, contributing aspect to the success of his education.”124 It seemed as though Hammond believed that men would not be able to control themselves with women present. He said the Princeton man had a reputation for being a “dashing, undisciplined fellow” in his time. Hubbell and Hammond’s voices were two of a number of diverse voices on the issue of coeducation, but the notion of gender equality in admissions prevailed. The one-time bastion for white men was crumbling, and Princeton welcomed its first official class of women in the fall of 1969. Black women were part of that class, and they experienced multiple levels of bigotry.

      Vera Marcus from Birmingham, Alabama, was the first black woman to enroll, attend, and graduate from the university. Her family lived modestly as her father was a minister, janitor, and street sweeper; her mother was a beautician. Prior to enrolling at Princeton, Marcus was one of the first black students to attend a newly desegregated high school in Birmingham, so the distinct feeling of isolation and being the “other” was familiar to her.125 Because of her forced solitude, she focused on her academic achievement. Marcus’s performance, she believed, was the reason that Princeton recruited her with a scholarship. She had not thought to apply to Princeton initially, but once she received an offer letter, she was New Jersey bound. Being the first black woman to graduate from the Ivy League institution never occurred to Marcus before she actually came to campus.

      As she was part of the first class of women officially enrolled as Princetonians, she regularly confronted sexism. The eating clubs, which were historically problematic for black students, did not allow women to join either. The entire lifestyle that some of her white peers maintained was completely outside of her worldview. She commented that at Princeton, she experienced “first-hand what life could be like if you were among the haves” in contrast to the have-nots.126 Those who joined eating clubs had a privilege that others did not. Marcus, who came from a city where black girls were murdered in a church a mile away from her home in 1963, recollected that in high school and college she was not trying to be a hero, but rather she just wanted to “stay alive.” Looking back on her academic career, she explained that the last time she had felt normal was when she was eleven years old and attending her all-black elementary school. There, she was merely another student. That was not the case at Princeton for Marcus. As one scholar described the experience of early black Cornell University students, black students in the Ivy League were “part and apart” from their institutions. Sadly, Marcus stated, her college career was “colored by that loneliness,” and it was intensified by the fact СКАЧАТЬ